@kwang2000 said:
@silentpredator said:
Darius Kazemi's piece is rather unnecessary, no? It basically says that if you're struggling to express your ideas through video games, then perhaps you should try another medium. Do people really need to be told that?
... Yes? Haven't you ever found it weird that 99% of video games have little 2-3 minute movies every few levels where all the rules, character actions, and motivations are completely different from what just happened while you're shooting dudes in the face?
Yeah. Games should be games and stop trying to be movies or books. Even movies have a tough time separating themselves from the narrative medium of the page. That said, I don't think games embracing their game-ness means they must negate their potential to become more emotional and more personally revealing. Meaningful emotionality isn't limited to conventional narrative techniques. Think about some movies that use the distinctive qualities of their medium to great effect. Wild Strawberries, Days of Heaven, Stalker, The Master, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and so on, all use music, sound, images, and acting in a way exclusive to film while delivering powerful experiences. There is no reason why games can't use their own traits (the big one being, of course, interactivity) to deliver information and meaning while embracing their game-ness. More developers just need to learn how to abandon jarring and ill-fitting ways of conveying narrative and story.
Of course, none of this means that games can't successfully use "traditional" ways of telling a story either. The Walking Dead was almost a comic, and yet I doubt it would have elicited such a response if it was a choose your own adventure book. To further the movie analogies, plenty of great movies use conventional tropes of literature/plays. Cutscenes in games can still be great.
I would disagree with the general point Darius makes were it not for his caveat, which in turn kinda makes his whole argument weirdly obvious and tautological. His piece might as well have been titled "If you aren't good at expressing yourself via games maybe you might maybe sorta be better at expressing yourself via something else."
He also says "Don't limit yourself," and then proceeds to "explain" why the medium game developers work in is limiting. Why can't a game be about how his girlfriend at the time treated him like shit and so he really fucking hated her? Simply because he or others can sum up their feelings in a (potentially) reductive sentence doesn't mean games can't or shouldn't elaborate on that sentiment. That's like saying poetry is limiting because instead of being evocative and elegiac you could've said "I basically was bummed out" or the novel isn't effective at telling stories because Joyce could've said "Bloom did some errands," instead of writing Ulysses.
Why make a movie or a game or music or whatever, it's so pointless/dumb. Just explain what happened and how you feel in like 3 paragraphs and go back to working at the steel mill like zomg.
Anyway if you're bad at something, either work hard to get better at it or move on, not some insane cutting edge idea. While I understand his argument, it is really kind of pointless...if people try and fail at something (especially something very complex and new), it is not as if no one should ever try to do that thing ever. Few games in existence can from top to bottom, almost virtually in their entirety be reduced and unraveled to their central ideas; and more or less do it with nothing but what is unique to games, in an almost holographic form where each piece is a reflection but also a building block of the whole. Then again, most forms of art can rarely do this anyway.
While we need to find better way to tell stories and better ways to stay consistent with narrative ideas and plans without making games too simple / monotonus, it does not mean people should just give up.
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